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One thing I really miss about living in Florida, are the orange trees that grew like weeds almost anywhere they were planted. I loved the way the orange groves would perfume the the air every spring when they were in bloom, and it was always a treat to be able to pick and eat the fruit when it was at it’s peak.

I will never forget the time myself and the other neighborhood children, could no longer resist the bright orange spheres slowly ripening on a local farmers trees. Completely disobeying our parents orders, we snuck into the orange grove, hid in the trees, and struggled to remove the peel from a few stolen pieces of fruit. Our hearts raced as we did so and Read more…

“Safekeeping the Earth’s goods, preserving them for the future is an act of faith. Living the natural life is man’s pledge to be faithful to the Earth.” ~Grace Firth

One of the pleasures of living in a small town is that there is almost always an old sleepy public library not too far away and it is often within it that you will encounter the richest treasures. Nestled deep in the shelves you will find, old books that are no longer in print, the pages long ago yellowed, some of them dog eared and often marked with the thoughts or ideas of a previous reader. Entranced by their romanticism, I often fill my basket with several, to later bring home and marvel over in more detail later on.

Our Easter weekend was ice cold and blustery. Other then venturing out to Holmes County (home of The World’s Largest Amish Population as well as The World’s Largest Buffet) for canning supplies, we stayed home cringing in horror as last week’s perfect green grass and shivering little yellow dandelions were periodically buried under a light dusting of snow. We also mourned the Hyacinths outside our door that had been reduced to limp little stems lying defeated on the ground as their fragile purple flowers bowed down in defeat to winter’s last hoorah…

This past weekend I drove into Columbus to explore the nearest Whole Foods Market, hoping to find some GMO Free replacements for the items we had decided to eliminate from our diet. It has been years since we have lived within driving distance from a Whole Foods, but as soon as we walked through the doors, I remembered why it used to be one of our favorite places to shop.

Navigating my grocery cart through the produce section, my senses were immersed in a rainbow of colors and instantly intermingled with the fragrances as well as the textures of some of the freshest, best looking produce I had seen since shopping the local Amish Farm Markets last summer. We are just entering into the first throes of spring here in the mid-west and it felt decadent to find produce that looked as if it had been picked just that morning. Without a second thought, I filled my cart with large healthy looking bunches of crisp organic arugula, bright orange carrots with green tops, red and gold Beets, green and white asparagus, no thicker than my baby finger, vibrant green leeks, perfect purple potatoes, luscious Texas grapefruits, and some of the largest, and sunniest Meyer Lemons I have ever seen. Read more…